Obnoxiously difficult quotes

[LiveLoveLaugh]

you seem to have the knack of where to start

[justplayin]

This one threw me off by having three single letters:

"Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel."
— Henry Louis Mencken

Also, not long ago I had one with "o clock" with no apostrophe. I kept trying to make the single letter an "I" or an "a."

[Lurker]

Antipathy, dissimilarity of views, hate, contempt, can accompany true love.

- J. August Strindberg

[Lurker]

Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. - Ben Franklin

Solve rate is 14.5%, which isn't terribly low.
Average solve time, 399 seconds. That is the highest average I've seen. Anyone find one higher?


PS: digirl has the record at 28 seconds.

[mark]

I get really frustrated with Alexander Pope's archaic, backward grammatical style. It's like Yoda smoked a fattie and decided to write some poetry. If quotations are worthy of the annals of time I think they should at least be grammatically sound. Forgive me if I have offended any Pope fans but this guy just isn't my cup of tea at all.

[kat]

I can't stand his quotes!

[mark]

good old Ben Franklin just whipped me good...

"Use no hurtful deceit - think innocently and justly and if you speak, speak accordingly."
— Benjamin Franklin

This one took me over 2000 seconds to solve. I just couldn't get a start on it. I was using Ts and Ps in those double letter spots and just couldn't figure it out...I finally got "innocently" and the rest fell together.

[mark]

"I am his Highness dog at Kew; pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? "
— Alexander Pope

What the hell is this?!? I swear this guy should have been hung!

[bansaisequoia]

Actually, this quote didn't seem too bad to me, either. It's got an "I" in it, and I've actually heard of the Kew Gardens before. I think someone once showed me their boring vacation slides or something. Surfing the net, I also discovered that there's actually another Kew Gardens located in Queens, NYC. Small world.

LONDON

NEW YORK

[mark]

As far as I'm concerned you can hang his damned dog too! And what's with the use of other languages in these quotes? In one quote the word for tomorrow was Spanish while every other word was English. Do these guys think they're being clever? It kept trying to make banana fit when I suddenly remembered an excerpt from one of my favorite cartoons - "Road to El Dorado" - when one of the characters ( I think it was Tulio ) said "row back to Spain like there's no mañana!" If it wasn't for my love of cartoons I think I'd still be going bananas over that one. Sheesh!